The Art of Nature

‘[In] Perelandra by C.S. Lewis, the protagonist eats a bit of seaweed and it gives him the perception of an undersea creature,’ he recalls. ‘I think there are so many ways to translate [plants] into images in whatever capacity. I’m always trying to evolve that.’

Johnson’s early work was interested in the ‘aesthetics of landscape and horror’. But since then, he’s made wildly inventive paintings that explore the otherworldly qualities of individual species. For Plant Communication Network, a 2018 exhibition at London’s Peter von Kant gallery, he rendered the Brugmansia or angel’s trumpet – a South American plant known for altering human perception – in swirling arrays of yellow, turquoise and blue.

‘I like the idea of poisonous plants as a subject because it gives the plant agency,’ he says. ‘We think of plants as something we prune to our desire but if a plant is inside you and doing something that you are not prepared for, it is in control.’

Johnson’s compositions decentre human ways of seeing. At the moment, the artist is making paintings that investigate plants that come to life in the dark.

‘I quite like this idea of what biologists call “vespertine” – plants that are fragrant at night,’ he says. ‘We have a couple of angel’s trumpets (Brugmansia spp.) and when we get ready for bed, they fill the flat with fragrance. It’s amazing how they have this inherent clock.’

Pimm is wary of material production. Works such as 2019’s Earth Eating play with geophagy – the practice of ingesting soil. ‘We have to eat, right?’ they laugh. ‘I’ve been preparing meals made from mushrooms and salts and clays as a way of trying to experience environments rather than trampling on them.’

For Pimm, perceiving the natural world as conscious is also about unearthing histories that are easy to overlook. The artist’s 2019 installation, (The Great Exhibition of) The Work of Cash Crops, presented at the Serpentine Galleries, explored the relationship between rubber plantations in India and Britain’s colonial influence.

‘Plantation history is deeply related to extraction – plants are not just an analogy, they are the holders of this story,’ they say. ‘We used a [sonic device] “midisprout” to play the electrical impulses of the plants. You got to learn about the flow of energy that lives in [them].’

The Argentinian-born artist, Indigenist and musician makes dazzling paintings informed by ritual and ceremony, and rooted in ancient Amazonian traditions. For Muñoz de Toro, they offer a spiritual path.

‘I do not think of plants as humans, with a consciousness or sentience, but as beings, teachers and guides that should be highly respected,’ she says. ‘Each [has] their own energy and can heal, help, harm, open, protect, clean, nourish, firm the mind, clear the mind. [They] can give strength to your words, open the heart, give power, kill, poison, and more.’

Over the past few years, Muñoz de Toro has run art workshops across Indigenous villages in Acre, in the Brazilian Amazon. ‘We study the sacred geometries that are painted on the skin with natural pigments,’ she says. ‘[It’s] also about finding equilibrium between the older traditions and the newer, contemporary arts that are part of natural transformation and movement.’

She made The Root, a work that depicts a serpent wound around a tree, when the pandemic hit Brazil. The painting, which sees roots reach into the soil and exposes an underground universe to the viewer, showed as part of The Botanical Mind, a 2020 exhibition at London’s Camden Art Centre. Like much of her art, it arose out of a vision.

‘I had a vision of these gigantic live roots, moving like serpents and rising up as a tree,’ she says. ‘I rushed into a room and made a small sketch – it was so powerful.’